R - cannot access urls for package installation

Question

I recently installed R Studio (Version 0.99.892) on a personal computer (windows 8) and am trying to install, among others, the following packages: ggplot2; dplyr; rmarkdown; tidyr.

Neither R nor R Studio is able to install any of these packages. Each time I attempt to install a package, I get the set of warnings I include at the bottom of this post.

I have used the install.packages command as well as the built-in package installation tool. I have tried several different mirrors.

I have tried a public university internet source, my own private internet source, and a phone tether. I have tried to connect through a VPN. I have added R Studio to my Windows Firewall exception list and have also completely disabled the Windows Firewall. I am running no other firewalls.

I have toggled the various connection options in the "Packages" tab in Global Options.

I can access the URLs in a browser.

Here are the warnings from R Studio:

> install.packages("devtools")
Warning in install.packages :
  InternetOpenUrl failed: 'The server name or address could not be resolved'
Warning in install.packages :
  InternetOpenUrl failed: 'The server name or address could not be resolved'
Warning in install.packages :
  unable to access index for repository https://cran.fhcrc.org/src/contrib:
  cannot open URL 'https://cran.fhcrc.org/src/contrib/PACKAGES'
Warning in install.packages :
  InternetOpenUrl failed: 'The server name or address could not be resolved'
Warning in install.packages :
  InternetOpenUrl failed: 'The server name or address could not be     resolved'
Warning in install.packages :
  unable to access index for repository http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/RWin/src/contrib:
  cannot open URL 'http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/RWin/src/contrib/PACKAGES'
Installing package into ‘C:/Users/Nikhailovich/Documents/R/win-library/3.2’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
Warning in install.packages :
  InternetOpenUrl failed: 'The server name or address could not be resolved'
Warning in install.packages :
  InternetOpenUrl failed: 'The server name or address could not be resolved'
Warning in install.packages :
  unable to access index for repository https://cran.fhcrc.org/src/contrib:
  cannot open URL 'https://cran.fhcrc.org/src/contrib/PACKAGES'
Warning in install.packages :
  InternetOpenUrl failed: 'The server name or address could not be resolved'
Warning in install.packages :
  InternetOpenUrl failed: 'The server name or address could not be resolved'
Warning in install.packages :
  unable to access index for repository http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/RWin/src/contrib:
  cannot open URL 'http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/RWin/src/contrib/PACKAGES'
Warning in install.packages :
  package ‘devtools’ is not available (for R version 3.2.3)
Warning in install.packages :
  InternetOpenUrl failed: 'The server name or address could not be resolved'
Warning in install.packages :
  InternetOpenUrl failed: 'The server name or address could not be resolved'
Warning in install.packages :
  unable to access index for repository https://cran.fhcrc.org/bin/windows/contrib/3.2:
  cannot open URL 'https://cran.fhcrc.org/bin/windows/contrib/3.2/PACKAGES'
Warning in install.packages :
  InternetOpenUrl failed: 'The server name or address could not be resolved'
Warning in install.packages :
  InternetOpenUrl failed: 'The server name or address could not be resolved'
Warning in install.packages :
  unable to access index for repository http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/RWin/bin/windows/contrib/3.2:
  cannot open URL 'http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/RWin/bin/windows/contrib/3.2/PACKAGES'

Here are the warnings from R (3.2.3):

> install.packages("ggplot2")
Installing package into ‘C:/Users/Nikhailovich/Documents/R/win-library/3.2’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
--- Please select a CRAN mirror for use in this session ---
Error in download.file(url, destfile = f, quiet = TRUE) : 
  cannot open URL 'https://cran.r-project.org/CRAN_mirrors.csv'
In addition: Warning message:
In download.file(url, destfile = f, quiet = TRUE) :
  InternetOpenUrl failed: 'The server name or address could not be resolved'
Warning: unable to access index for repository https://dirichlet.mat.puc.cl/src/contrib:
  cannot open URL 'https://dirichlet.mat.puc.cl/src/contrib/PACKAGES'
Warning: unable to access index for repository http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/RWin/src/contrib:
  cannot open URL 'http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/RWin/src/contrib/PACKAGES'
Warning: unable to access index for repository https://dirichlet.mat.puc.cl/bin/windows/contrib/3.2:
  cannot open URL 'https://dirichlet.mat.puc.cl/bin/windows/contrib/3.2/PACKAGES'
Warning: unable to access index for repository http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/RWin/bin/windows/contrib/3.2:
  cannot open URL 'http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/RWin/bin/windows/contrib/3.2/PACKAGES'
Warning message:
package ‘ggplot2’ is not available (for R version 3.2.3) 

There are several stackexchange posts on package installation in R and R Studio, but I was not able to find any that answered my particular situation. Thanks in advance to anyone that knows what's going on

Answer 1

Run this command:

options(repos="https://CRAN.R-project.org")

after that try install.packages;it should work.Tested on my system.

Answer 2

This has happened to me before. Try explicitly specifying the location:

install.packages("devtools", repos="https://cran.rstudio.com/")

Answer 3

You can indeed specify the location when using the install.packages() function with the argument repos=, but you can also choose your favorite repository which will be used each time you download a package.

    options(repos="my_favorite_CRAN_mirror")

You can see a list of all availables mirrors on the CRAN website. Juste copy/paste the adress of the closest CRAN repository to you.

You should be able after this step to retry install.packages('ggplot2')

Answer 4

You should try following code:

install.packages("ggbiplot",dependencies = TRUE, repos = 'http://cran.rstudio.com/')

It will help you to install the packages for the error:

package is not available for this version